Re: E-Biikes are not bicycles

Am Tue, 24 Sep 2024 08:23:03 -0400 schrieb Zen Cycle
<funkmaster@hotmail.com>:
 

On 9/23/2024 8:47 PM, sms wrote:

On 9/23/2024 8:18 AM, Roger Merriman wrote:
>
<snip>

...
 

Sorry, not buyin' it. Not to mention the fact that taking someone off an
e-bike and telling them they have to pedal is one way to completely put
them off cycling, regardless of the proper gearing.

 That makes no sense. Someone who has switched from a bicycle to an
E-bike has already essentially given up on cycling, regardless of how
some clueless politicians twist the laws to treat low-powered mopeds
like bicycles.
 

I'd suggest you go
out on an E-bike for an hour and ride some hills. You'll get a good
sense of why "with proper gearing there is usually no need for an
electric motor" is a rather myopic comment.

  This statement alone proves that e-bikes are not bicycles.   A bicycle
that gives a weak rider the power of a Tour de France athlete is not a
bicycle, but a motorcycle.  It does not have the essential
characteristics that distinguish a bicycle from a motorcycle.
 A bicycle is driven by the person sitting on it, that determines how it
is ridden. For a great part, this depends on how much power that person
can deliver and for how long, both short term, for looking at a single
ride, and in the long run.
 This isn't a static relation. Quite the opposite, how hard you exercise
your muscles while cycling and how long you train your cardiac system
influences how much you gain - or lose - in strength and endurance.   A
motorized bicycle, on the other hand, makes most of this unnecessary, as
it reduces these constraints and incentives to almost nothing.  All that
remains is the illusion of riding a bike.
 A little bit of history and context, plus some technical details.
 For about two hundert years now, the common understanding of the term
bicycle is a human powered vehicle with two or more wheels and one or
more crank drives.
 Now there exists this modern equivocal term "pedal assistance" though,
which has been ridden to death to justify calling a class of low powered
motorcycles bicycles, suggesting that most of the power still comes from
the person riding the bike. Unfortunately, it ain't so, for a long time
now.
 In Germany, the campaign began with the term “pedelec” being used to
describe e-bikes with pedal assistance that only support up to 100% of
the rider's power and up to 25 km/h. Only when e-bikes were legally
treated as bicycles in some respects,these motorized bicycles were
increasingly referred to as “bicycles” in the media.
 The actuall law that was enacted says something completely different:
there is actually no formal limit to how much power the motor driving a
25 km/h-E-Bike may deliver and there is no capacity limit,  about how
long a motor may power the bike, either. So the two characteristics that
make up a bicycle were eliminated: the limited amount of power and
endurance that a person can muster.
 Of course, besides the cut-off at 25 km/h, there still is some kind of
limit, often mentioned to downplay the amount of motorization:
"But, eh, there is a 250 watt limit!".
 Sure, there is.  But it is specified in a very specific way so that the
restriction has almost no teeth.   It's called "Nenndauerleistung" in
German, or "nominal continuous power" in English. In essence, this again
specifies that there is no real limit.  A 250 W e-Bike motor may deliver
500, 600 or even 1000 watts, as long as it doesn't spend more than 250
watts on average in a sliding 30 minute window.
 That 100 percent limit which paved the way for this toothless regulation
didn't even get into European law at all.  All we have is a rule that
the motor may not deliver power when the person sitting on the bike
stops pedaling for a while.  Who hasn't yet seen some "food delivery
hero" on an electric bike riding their bike uphill by just turning the
crank half a turn forward and than backwards?
 A Bosch motor easily delivers 600 Watt, it assists with up to 340% in
addition to the power the rider supplies, when using one of the old
"modes", or an unspecified amount plus some likewise unspecified
additional boost, when using one of the newer "intelligent" modes.   And
that's just what the adds say, currently. It might even become 900 Watt
and 400%, next year, without breaking the rules.
 What gives?  Modern low powered electic mopeds could have become a nice
addition to range of motorized vehicles at the lower end, without this
coup of staging such a vehicle as a bicycle by combining the
disadvantages of an e-moped with the disadvantages of a bicycle.   A
missed opportunity, with the result that many people are now forgoing
the benefits of real cycling and living unhealthier and more dangerous
lives by pseudo-cycling, instead.
 

>
My wife is a great example. Her favorite bike is a Jamis Dakar MTB 3x9
Deore. Even on the moderate hills around here on the road (with
semi-slicks) hills are very challenging. Sure, she's in the granny doing
6 mph on a 3% grade, but it's still a lot of work for a casual cyclist.

 For comparison:
 I'm 71 years old now, my wife is not much younger. I've never been into
sports, neither is she.  She could walk to work, I commuted by bike for
decades, had to give up cycling completely for quite some time after an
accident, but managed to gain some strength back, after retirement. Took
a while.
 I did that by starting moderately in 2018, slowly expanding my range,
from initially less than 30 km and 200 meters of altitude gain, avoiding
steep ascends,  to 140 km and almost 2000 meteres of altitude gain, in
spring this year.
 About halve of those rides that go from the flat rhine valley into the
nearby hilly countryside,  my wife and I did together. These where short
rides initially, from some 20-30 km and 200-300 m in altitude gain to
about 60 km and 600 m.
 In the past, she had strictly refused to ride climbs that were steeper
than around six percent.   "I just cannot do that", she said.
 Of course, she couldn't, for the following reasons.
 For context, we were using road bicycles that whe bought in early 2010,
for using them for vacations in the south of France, both equipped with
3x10 gears, drop bars, 25 mm slicks.  After changing cassettes to the
lowest possible gear ratio, whe had 30 front, 30 rear on my bike, 30
front, 28 rear on her bike, good enough for both of us doing some longer
6-6 percent streches uphill and some short 7 percent ascents, but no
more.
 Problems when riding uphill
     * Riding up steeper hills using a 1:1 ratio or worse with a very low
cadence does reduce the necessary power (watts), but doesn't reduce the
necessary torque/force.  Men have better prerequisites here.
   * Riding uphill with a low power budget needs riding slowly, the
necessary riding technique has to be learned
   * Stopping for that reason isn't easy to handle
   * Riding slowly needs a good fitting bike
   * A difficult to operate gearshift doesn't help concentrating on
pedaling and steering
 In essence, while our old bikes where still more than good enough for
getting around quite a bit on flat and moderately steep ground and
getting better by just doing it often enough, there was a kind of
chicken and egg problem here, for riding uphill.  You have to learn and
master riding up steep hills by just doing it. But how do you do that,
when you can't even start or ride that slowly, without tipping over,
because the cadence is far to low, initially?
  After some research and a long trip through local bike shops, my
solution was to start the project with a professional bikefitting with
our old bikes, in order to get key values for new bikes. And then I
built two customized bikes myself, early last year.  Problem solved.
 She even rode up a long ascent, 9 percent average, including some short
10 and 12 percent parts, half a year later. Twice!  "Let's look wether I
can do it again", she said.
 These bikes weren't cheap, but E-bikes aren't that cheap, either, if you
don't buy complete thrash.   It's just the question how in what to
invest, into an e-bike for getting instant gratification, or into a
better bike plus some time, for getting a delayed gratification,
combining two benefits, independence from a motor, and better health.
 

>
Last year in Ireland we rented bikes. She got an E-bike (on my
insistence) and I got a regular bike (same basic bike, but with no
motor). She flew up hills much longer and steeper than anything around
here with little effort, leaving me behind gasping for air.

 Sure.  An E-bike gives her something she doesn't get from a real
bicycle, instant gratification, without effort.  This comes with a
price, though.
 

>
Try telling her she'd do just as well with an "appropriately" geared
bike, and you'll get her classic 'you really can't be that clueless' glare.

 No comment.